Sorry!

Had 2010 production meetings today and there were lots and lots of points to be covered...then had to whip over to Boulder to pick up a prescription to keep my pathetic right eye from popping out of my head. Strongly urge you all to get the simple vaccination against shingles. It was shingles that whacked my right eye, destroying the vision in about a week. Which was how long it took the medical "professionals" to figure out what was happening (and it was a nurse, not a doctor, who correctly pegged shingles). Since I pretty much marinate myself in stress, I have to keep careful check on the shingles firing up again.

Here's a little of this and a little of that from some of the other bloggers. Caleb at Gun Nuts Media takes a look at the plethora of piston guns out there and ultimately comes to the same conclusion I did...well, okay:

On the third hand, I am yet to be convinced that the usual AR shooter requires a piston gun. The only reason I would choose one is if I regularly ran the gun with a suppressor. Otherwise, and this is some gen-u-ine gun-guru wisdom I’m about to drop on y’all, but if you want a truly reliable AR, get a 20″! A 20″ rifle with a rifle length gas tube, a chrome lined chamber and bore, a correctly dimensioned 5.56 NATO chamber, a correctly aligned gas tube with staked carrier key screws, using Magpul PMAGs, and a fresh extractor spring with black insert will be as reliable a rifle as you could ask for.

I'm trying to decide whether to pop the bucks to keep the Ruger gas piston gun...I had myself all pumped up on the FNH bullpup, but when it came right down to it I let it go. Caleb was with Frank James at S&W's annual event at GUNSITE, running the new flavor of their M&P-15. Here's his take:

Okay, I've had three days of high round count training with the latest version of Smith & Wesson's M&P-15 and a few of you are wondering, "What does that old idiot think?"

Since I accept no advertising, my critics won't be able to say I was influenced by dollars. (Well, they can, but they won't have a leg to stand on. I'm still the blunt S.O.B I've always been.) In a short phrase I liked the gun. I put close to 800 rounds through the gun that was assigned to me over a short three day period of time and had zero, to repeat ZERO, malfunctions or any kind or issues with the firearm.

My experience with the older iteration of the S&W, which I bought, is that it runs and runs. Of course, I have to say it's been awhile since I saw anything short of a badly assembled parts gun that didn't run. ARs are seriously debugged technology, which is why I think everyone should have at least one.

There's a movie remake of the A-Team coming, and it's wrong, wrong, wrong! Liam Neesom as Hannibal and UFC fighter Quinton Jackson reprising the Mr. T role of B.A. ("Bad Attitude") Baracus. Okay, let's get down to it...there is only one B.A. Baracus and his name is Mr. T. I pity the fool who thinks otherwise. Think they'll still use those folding stock Mini-14s that never seemed to hit anyone?

Finally, it's a sad commentary when even the Canadians are pitying us. This from David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen on the strange comparisons between Gorbachev and Obama...read the whole thing :

The comparison between Gorbachev and Obama is apt on few levels. The chief difference is between the U.S. of 2009, and the USSR of 1985; between a huge, decentralized, open economy, and the society it serves; and a much smaller, very centralized, command economy, and the society serving it. These circumstances are not even remotely comparable, and one must be a fool indeed to play with a moral, economic, or ideological "equivalence" between the two old superpowers. Which is not to say such fools aren't numerous.

Nor are the two men, themselves, remotely comparable in their backgrounds, or political outlook. Gorbachev, for instance, had come up from tractor driver, not through elite schools including Harvard Law; he lacked the narcissism that constantly seeks self-reflection through microphones and cameras, or the sense that everything is about him.

On the other hand, some interesting comparisons could be made between the thuggish party machine of Chicago, which raised Obama as its golden boy; and the thuggish party machine of Moscow, which presented Gorbachev as it's most attractive face.

Am shooting a cowboy match up in the cowboy paradise of Wyoming tomorrow...